


Speak to Me

by wastefulreverie



Series: PhannieMay Shots 2019 [21]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Cancer, Gen, Haunting, Mentions of Cancer, ghost language, ghost speak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 02:25:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18983311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastefulreverie/pseuds/wastefulreverie
Summary: Humans simply didn’t know the language of the dead, ghost speak. So how did Danny Fenton, a loser by all accounts, know how to speak it?





	Speak to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day 26 of Phanniemay 2019, Ghost Speak.  
> Title from Imagine Dragon's "Speak to Me".

It was a single moment. A few strands of words that played to the ear in a different way, a cadence so foreign that it must be otherworldly. And to a listening ear, it was familiar. Yet, she still didn't know what it meant. Nor how somehow like him could know such a language. But she was determined, determined to learn how _he_ knew. Humans simply didn't know the language of the dead, ghost speak. So how did Danny Fenton, a loser by all accounts, know how to speak it?

Star Evans knew already: she was going to find out, and she was going to make him tell her. And if she could persuade him, offer a good incentive, perhaps he could even teach her how to communicate with the dead.

With this in mind, she evaded Paulina's odd glare and tiptoed around Danny's desk before he had the chance to pack up his things. Nothing was different about him today; he was still the same skinny, fatigued nerd that was skittish around adults, that always made excuses to skip class to do who knows what. Star knew that he wasn't shooting up, at least. Fenton wasn't the type - he was too spineless to do drugs.

Really, the only thing different about him today was the short exclamation that he'd muttered under his breath, that was _just_ loud enough for Star to hear it three desks away. An otherworldly language comprised of hissing and static and syllables that couldn't be spoken - she'd tried.

Danny seemed to notice that she had targeted him. _Good_. Now hopefully Star could get something out of him before his goth little girlfriend noticed and whisked him away….

His grip on the strap to his purple backpack tightened and he seemed to glance between Star in the door, already planning his escape. Danny bit his lip and gave a frustrated huff when she didn't back down, standing firmly in front of him. Star almost smirked, she wasn't going to let him get away that easily. She needed this. She needed to _know_.

"Do you want something, Star?" he asked, finally.

"Yeah, actually," she said, deliberately pulling down a strand of her hair and twirling it, firmly, wrapping it around her finger. "I heard you talk in ghost speak, or whatever it's called earlier. I was just wondering how you knew it."

And with that, his entire demeanor slackened. His eyes widened with panic, his breath hitched abruptly, and his fingers dug into his backpack so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Even his face was pale, well paler than usual. Star hadn't thought Fenton could _be_ paler than he already was, but apparently he could be - now he was white as a sheet! It was almost uncanny. She hadn't even expected the question to startle him so much, but at least this reaction was a definite confirmation; that he _did_ know ghost speak.

"Ghosts? I said something about ghosts?" he played dumb, quite poorly. Who ever had taught him to lie had done a _horrible_ job - what a wreck!

"You spoke in ghost language, I'm not stupid," she rolled her eyes, leaning against a nearby desk for emphasis. "After Lancer asked for homework, you said something under your breath in ghost speak."

"Like… you mean the language that ghosts talk? I don't - don't know that," he denied.

She deadpanned, "How do you know it, Danny?"

He purposely circumvented eye contact, figuratively burning holes into the ceiling when he protested, "I don't!"

No wonder this boy couldn't navigate himself in a social situation if he was _this_ bad of a liar. She almost felt a little bad for him.

"Really?" she tried a different tactic, "Look, Danny. I'm not like… gonna spread rumors that you know a creepy language. I just want to know how you learned it because I'm sort of interested in that stuff." She'd get to the part about how she wanted to learn it herself _after_ he admitted he knew it. One step at a time.

Still, he continued to weakly try to evade admission. Even though he sucked at lying, at least he was stubborn. "I didn't learn it!"

She groaned, "Goddamnit stop making this a big deal! How did you learn-"

He was frustrated too, frustrated of her persistence. And it showed, "-because it was just in my head!" he cried.

That there. _That_ was something. And now they were _getting_ somewhere.

Star grinned, addressing his slip up, "What do you mean 'it was just in your head?'"

He flustered, squirming around in Star's palm, trying to wriggle himself out of her grip. But it was no use, because he had given a partial truth. There was no way out now but the truth. And they both knew that, or so Star hoped…. After all, it would be much faster if Fenton just came clean.

He shook his head, "I - I don't-"

Star pondered, weighing what she knew aloud, "So from what you're saying, you never _learned_ ghost speak. Somehow you just knew it? How does that work? Hmm…."

And at that, Fenton finally seemed to realize that his only route was confession. He let go of his backpack and his shoulders slumped in surrender. Although his body had given up, his face was still drawn with stress and apprehension. "I… sure, I do know ghost speak. Since you won't _drop it_."

He looked around. They were still standing in the classroom, alone. Everyone else had left for the day and even Lancer had reported for bus-duty, not due to return until all the buses left. Confident that nobody was listening, Danny dropped his backpack back onto the floor and slid into a nearby desk.

Star took the seat beside him, swinging her legs aside so she was facing Danny directly. "And? How is it just in your head? I'm _interested_ , Danny," she reiterated.

He bit his lip, anxiously. Fenton carefully rubbed the back of his neck, "Well, you see… ghost speak was put into my head because…" he struggled, "it happened when I first came in contact with a ghost?"

Now she was more confused. "What? Do you mean like… overshadowed?" He seemed uncertain of what he was saying, but that seemed like the most logical interpretation. His convoluted words suggested that he didn't know much about ghosts at all. He was a Fenton for Christ's sake, shouldn't he know the term for overshadowed?

His eyes lit up with recognition, "Yeah! Overshadowed! Tha - that's it," he said to himself. "Well, uh, one day a ghost overshadowed me and then suddenly I just knew ghost speak! They must've just left it behind…" he laughed. "I don't want anyone to think I'm weird, _especially_ my parents. So could you not tell anyone? Like…. _any_ living soul?" he added.

She nodded, agreeing to his terms, "I guess." She paused, testing the waters, teasing, "What about _dead_ souls?"

Danny froze for a moment before comprehending her cheesy joke. " _Hilarious_."

"So which ghost was it?" she asked, before the conversation drifted too far away from the topic she wanted to discuss.

Danny blinked at her, emptily. "What."

"Which ghost overshadowed you?" she specified.

"Oh, _that_. I uh - uh well - uh… -antom?"

"Huh?" she asked, not sure if she had heard correctly.

"Phantom," he emphasized deliberately. "To uh… get me out of the way of a ghost fight. I was standing around and debri started falling towards me and uh…" he mimicked the movement of debri with his hand before giving up and letting his arm fall flat. "Yeah, to get me out of the line of fire Phantom overshadowed me and flew me somewhere safe. Ever since I woke up, I've had ghost speak in my head," he finished lamely. "Sometimes I uh, slip into it. Like I did today."

"So all I have to do is get Phantom to overshadow me?" Star put together, rhetorically. Phantom was elusive, but if he of all ghosts could practically _install_ ghost speak in her head then she would find him. She needed to know ghost speak.

His eyes widened. "Wh - why would you want that?" He coughed, "I mean… do you _want_ to know ghost speak?"

He posed the question as if he hadn't been apart of their conversation for the past three minutes. She regarded him oddly, "Well, _duh_. That's why I was asking you in the first place."

His mouth seemed to silently form an 'o' shape as her words registered. "You… want to know how to talk to ghosts? You realize that most of them speak English, right?" Then, he added, "And about Phantom, well," he laughed, "I don't think he's going to overshadow you. It's well, he came back later and apologized because it's not something he likes doing…. And I wouldn't ask either because he gets _super_ offended," he stressed, almost too much.

"Oh," she frowned. "But… can you teach me then? It's in your head, so that means that you can still teach, right?"

Danny seemed taken aback, unsure of how to react to her eager thirst for education. "But why do you _want_ to learn? I don't really see the purpose…." he trailed off.

"Well," she looked away, averting her eyes towards Lancer's desk, "there's _sorta_ a ghost in my house. I don't… don't want him hunted. I just want to talk." She gripped her hands on the edge of her desk. Telling Danny _Fenton_ this was probably a bad idea, but… if she persuade him, she could confide a few secret of her own. "But he's only been speaking in ghost and I don't know how to get past the language barrier."

The nights in her bedroom, the perpetual feeling of being watched. A soft presence coming from the corner, like an invisible eye lingering beside her fire alarm. Not so threatening, but definitely _eerie_. Even though Star felt like she was under constant watch, she never felt like she was in danger. She could _sense_ him, his... aura. And she… she just wanted to talk with him again. To make up for all the time that had been stolen, to make up for the childhood she wished she had relished.

And so, after months and _months_ of being attuned to the feeling of being watched, she attempted confrontation. Late at night, when her parents had long gone to bed, Star brought her knees into her chest and leaned against her headboard, making herself tiny. She stared into that corner, where the fire alarm was hung on the wall. And the feeling of _wrongness_ swelled. Pushing down the terror that lingered in her throat, she spoke to it, " _Richard_?"

And her brother replied in that language; garbled syllables and layers of static that sounded _so_ distinct yet uncannily fleeting. The sound of his voice, laced with tones of death was unmistakable. Yet, she didn't understand, and she wasn't even sure if _he_ understood her either. She'd cried, cried into her pillow… cried out-

_"_ _I just want to understand…."_

-for her older brother, that had been taken too early. He'd only been a child, not even eleven years old when he was diagnosed with cancer. And she had been nine, oblivious to the hardships her brother would endure over the next few months. How his fair would fall out, eventually leaving him bald and sickly.

A few months after he started chemo, she'd tried to mimic him. She'd opened her rockstar pencil pouch, the one with hot pink guitars, and rummaged through it until she found her big girl scissors. Not the safety scissors, but the sharper pair her Dad bought her for fourth grade art class. She'd been ready to do it, standing in front of the sink, when Richard knocked on the bathroom door. She didn't have the heart to ignore him, so she opened the door. And at that moment, he knew; he saw the scissors and he put two and two together.

Richard, at the tender age of twelve, he sat her down on the toilet and smiled. It was a bittersweet expression, "You don't want to do that Scarlett."

"Yeah, I do," she protested. "I want my hair to be like yours. Even in a TV show, there was a character who cut his hair to match his sister's!" Tears welled in her eyes, "I want to do this for _you_."

"You don't have to cut your hair for me to tell that you care," he'd replied, touching her shoulder. "Hair… is temporary. But the way you care for someone, if you put enough effort… that gesture can last a _lifetime_."

Contrary to cliche, he hadn't said that it lasted 'forever'. Instead, he'd said a 'lifetime', aware of how little time he had left. It was that simple word choice that evaded her ten-year-old self, something she should have seen, but hadn't.

"But… can I do it anyway?" she asked, eyeing the scissors with temptation. She liked her hair, but that TV show she'd seen had demonstrated how much of an impact this action could deliver.

"No," he shook his head. "No, Star."

She blinked, "Star?"

"Yeah," he laughed. "Star. Because you're always going above and beyond. And it rhymes with _Scar_ -lett."

She giggled, forgetting the scissors. "Star… I - I like that."

When he died, not three weeks later, her parents were convinced that her new nickname was a 'coping mechanism'. They tried to discourage it, but eventually she won out. And later, she was known as nobody _but_ Star. Her school friends forgot that she was the younger sister of the poor boy with Leukemia… that had been Scarlett, after all. _Star_ was like her reinvented identity, a piece of Richard to silently live on with her….

And years later, Richard was literally haunting her. She was so close to him, so close to talking to him yet there was a language barrier she had to cross. And if Danny Fenton was her guide, then so be it.

"A ghost in your house?" Fenton asked. "And you know… who it is?"

She didn't like sharing it, but for the sake of winning him over… "My brother," she admitted. "He isn't as strong as the other ghosts, and he only sees to really haunt me at home. But I really… just want to have a _conversation_."

"So he's not corporeal or anything?" Fenton put together. He seemed more assertive than earlier, more… engaged. "You can just… hear him?"

"Yeah," she confirmed. So he did know more about ghosts than he'd let on….

"That probably means that he's in the Ghost Zone, still. Not your house. The ghosts in Amity are so powerful because their physical forms are actually _in_ Amity. He's in the Ghost Zone, probably trapped in a mirror version of your house… his lair." Star nodded, vaguely comprehending. Clearly, Fenton did know more about ghosts than he'd initially let on…. "I've encountered a ghost like that before, in a mirror here at the school; he was able to interact with the school minimally from the Ghost Zone. Though… it would probably take a few years for the connection to build, how long has he been-"

Her reply was automatic, "Six years."

"Oh yeah. That's - probably the right amount of time. Why he has only appeared now," he explained.

"I just haven't talked to him in so long," she reminisced. "And I was so young when he passed… so I feel like this is our second chance." This was it, this was her closing move. Star reached forward and placed her hand on Fenton's shoulder - a sympathetic draw, "And _you_ are the only person who can help me."

Danny, albeit hesitant, nodded. "Al - alright. I guess we can have lessons, if you're up for them? I gotta warn you, I _never_ have a consistent schedule."

That… actually worked? Well, of course it did - she was a _master_ of persuasion. All it took was one tug on the heartstrings. "Really?" she asked. "Thank you, Danny!"

"I can give you my number," he nodded, fishing out his phone. "I'll text you whenever I'm free, so sorry if it's last minute. My life is pretty hectic."

"I understand," she dismissed. "Half the time I do anything it's last minute, since Paulina is always so finnicky about what _she_ wants to do."

"Sounds stressful," he amended. He handed her his phone and she put her contact information it.

"I'm used to it," she shrugged, handing his phone back.

"Oh," Danny realized, eyes wide. "I have another idea."

She raised a brow, "What?"

He leaned over and unzipped his backpack, searching for something within its contents - _was that a soup can?_ \- pulling out a notebook. He placed it on the desk before carefully tearing out a page and placing the book back in his bag. He found a pencil and began to scribble, "I can write down some phrases that are rough translations. It'll be hard to transcribe ghost speak's pronunciations into the English alphabet _but_ I'll try. This way, you can have half a conversation with your brother."

Honestly, Star wouldn't be lying to say her jaw dropped just there. That was… more than she had been expecting? And that was _so_ generous? Was this the same kid who had been stubbornly refusing to admit he knew ghost speak only minutes earlier? She was at a true loss for words.

"Th - thank you so much!" she declared. "I really didn't-"

"Don't worry, I gotcha covered," Fenton smiled. He wrote down at least half a page of phrases before folding the paper and handing it out to Star. She regarded the paper carefully, making extra sure to place it somewhere in her backpack where it wouldn't get horribly crumpled.

"Seriously, you don't know how much I appreciate _all_ of this," she made sure that he knew.

"Really, it's no problem Star. I get how it must be, being so close to someone you love and unable to communicate… sounds like it sucks," he recounted. "As long as you don't tell anyone I know ghost speak-"

"-and as long as _you_ don't tell anyone that we're talking to each other," she bargained. "I have to keep my reputation, after all."

Fenton laughed, "Okay, that's fair." He paused, "Hey, do you want to do a lesson this Saturday, at the library? I'd say my place but my parents are a mess. Besides, this time of the year the only person at the library is my sister, so…."

"Sounds good," Star agreed. "I'll try to be there. Just text me when."

That worked out _brilliantly_. Soon, she would be able to roughly communicate with her brother again, after so, so long. And to think, all this started when she heard Danny mutter under his breath. If it hadn't been for that single moment… well, God knows how she would've dealt with this.


End file.
